Author Archives: News Sources

Ake Sellstrom — the lead UN weapons inspector in Syria

Foreign Policy reports: On Monday morning, a United Nations chemical weapons inspection team left the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Damascus, and prepared to head to the site of what is alleged to be the worst chemical weapons attack in decades. They were led by Ake Sellstrom, a Swedish scientist who finds himself transported from his classroom at Umea University into the middle of the worst conflict on the face of the planet.

Sellstrom and his team soon came face-to-face with the dangers of their mission: Snipers opened fire on their convoy as they approached the site, forcing them to turn back briefly. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime blamed the attack on the rebels in the area, while the Syrian opposition blamed militiamen loyal to the regime for opening fire.

Sellstrom, a round-faced Swede in his mid-60s, boasts three decades of experience conducting research into the effects of nerve agents on the human brain, and he previously served in top positions during the U.N. weapons inspection effort in Iraq. He eventually guided his team in Syria to the affected area, and footage filmed by residents showed the inspectors talking with local medical staff and examining those who were stricken by the onslaught. However, the attack meant that the team was unable to inspect a half-dozen key sites and had to condense its planned six-hour trip into 90 minutes. Moreover, the message delivered by the morning ambush was clear: Sellstrom and his team are in the crosshairs — both politically and literally — of powerful forces within Syria.

Sellstrom is the one wild card in what appears to be the march toward another U.S.-led military campaign in the Middle East. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made clear today that he holds the Assad regime responsible for the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs: Kerry referred to the use of such weapons as a “moral obscenity” and described the regime’s invitation for inspectors to visit the site as “too late to be credible.”

Sellstrom’s findings could legitimize to the world a U.S. intervention in Syria — or they could provide ammunition for Washington’s enemies, who argue that the United States may once again be blundering into an Arab country based on scant information about weapons of mass destruction. It is an odd position for a man who is neither a diplomat nor a general, just a little-known scientist with an unusual — and politically explosive — specialty.

“I know Ake. He’s a great guy, and it’s a horrible position he’s in,” said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chairman of the U.N. team that inspected Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War. “He’ll be under enormous pressure. How is he going to characterize what it is he finds? That is extremely difficult.” [Continue reading…]

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The real threat to our way of life? Not terrorists or faraway dictators, but our own politicians and securocrats

Simon Jenkins writes: What is Britain’s national security? At a time when the country once again ponders war, the arguments used should be precise and the language clear. This is seldom the case. The division of the world into good guys and bad guys, democrats and dictators, terrorists and counter-terrorists, not only insults peaceful diplomacy and promotes war. It pollutes the domestic rule of law and civil rights.

The controversial detention of David Miranda at Heathrow earlier this month was explained by the home secretary, Theresa May, and the Commons security committee chief, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, on the grounds that Miranda was carrying material that “could aid terrorism”. This mere possibility would, they said, constitute a “threat to national security”.

Time and again in the course of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the threat of terrorism was used to justify draconian anti-terrorist powers in Britain. Tony Blair said the powers were needed to “defend western values”. Gordon Brown told British troops in Helmand that their role was domestic, “to make Britain’s streets safe from terror“. Should Britain start bombing Syria, some murky agency will use this as justification to step up terrorist attacks on Britain, with a consequent twist in the ratchet of surveillance and detention by the British authorities.

Terrorism and national security are wholly distinct concepts. Terrorism involves a violent incident, a crime with usually facile political intent. It merely kills people and wrecks buildings. It acquires power only by generating an exaggerated response, and is countered by good policing and not overreacting. When the Brighton hotel was bombed in 1984, the police told Margaret Thatcher to cancel her conference and return to London. She rightly replied: “What, and let the terrorists win!”

Not even IRA terror, more systematic than anything spawned by al-Qaida, threatened national security – that is, the integrity of the British state or its institutions. To confuse terrorism with such security is to play the terrorist’s game. Those who do so lack faith in the robustness of the British constitution. They are what Lenin would have called terror’s “useful idiots“. [Continue reading…]

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Let’s make the NSA’s data available for public use

Evgeny Morozov writes: Search without Google is like social networking without Facebook: unimaginable. But superb proprietary algorithms and extremely talented employees only partially explain why both fields are dominated by just one firm. The real reason is that both Google and Facebook got into their fields early on, accumulated troves of data about their users, and are now aggressively exploiting that data to offer unique services that their data-poor contenders simply cannot match, no matter how innovative their business models.

Take Google’s personalized search or Facebook’s Graph Search feature. Both features are trivial to replicate; it’s the user data that makes them stand out. Thus, Google will indicate which links have been endorsed by our “friends” right in the search results; Facebook, via Graph Search, allows us to tap the wisdom of our friends and their friends.

Both companies have successfully approximated and then monetized our “social graph”—the once-trendy term to describe our many overlapping connections to other people. It’s small things like the social graph that explain why even a better, more innovative search engine or a social network with more respect for user privacy would have a hard time competing with Google and Facebook: As long as the dominance of these firms is powered by vast troves of user data, competitors are doomed.

Were we to rebuild our information infrastructure from scratch, we would surely notice that the current system is awful for competition. How could we run things differently? One option might be to run the social graph as a public institution of sorts, with state regulators making sure that all companies get equal access to such crucial information. Many of our social connections predate—and might even outlive—both Google and Facebook. These companies have mapped them well, but this shouldn’t prevent us from thinking of alternative ways of mapping them and making them available. Thus, instead of pouring public money into building better search engines—a mission attempted and quickly aborted by some European politicians—governments can focus on ensuring that the data playing field remains as level as possible. Better search engines and social networking sites might then emerge on their own, without any need for extra public backing.

The scheme could have many other benefits. For example, the regulators would be able to exercise far greater control over how user data is collected and accessed by third parties. It should be possible to anonymize this data so that better personalized services can be built without compromising user privacy. The fears of “the filter bubble” are greatly exaggerated; personalization is not evil per se—it’s the data trails that it leaves in its wake that should trouble us.

A few months ago, this might have seemed a reasonable but ultimately quixotic proposal. For a start, there seems dangerously little interest or desire in rebuilding—or even reimagining—our global information infrastructure. Just imagine the kind of effort that would be needed to gather all this information and organize it in an easy-to-use manner. Who would possibly fund such an endeavor?

Now that Edward Snowden has blown the whistle on the extensive spying operations of the National Security Agency, this question seems obsolete. Take the NSA’s much-discussed collection of metadata—the seemingly benign (or so they claim) information about who calls whom and when. It’s precisely this kind of metadata that is needed to build a better publicly run social graph. In fact, the NSA has probably already built it—and not just for America but probably for users in many other countries as well—often with tacit cooperation from intelligence services and telecommunication providers of those countries.

We can debate the ethics and legality of such initiatives until we all turn blue—and I suggest that we do, for, based on Snowden’s revelations, the NSA’s system is mired in secrecy, lacks proper congressional oversight, and enjoys unlimited rhetorical and lobbying support from the military-industrial complex. So, yes: The NSA’s data-collection practices must be reformed with accountability in mind.

These, however, are all questions about the future. But there’s a far more pragmatic question about the present: The NSA has all this data, and it’s not going away. (If anything, the much-discussed data storage center that the NSA is building in Utah suggests otherwise.) It would be a colossal mistake not to come up with a global institutional arrangement that would make at least chunks of that data available for public use. [Continue reading…]

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Intercepted phone calls raise questions about who authorized Damascus chemical attack

Foreign Policy reports: Last Monday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they’re certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime — and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.

But the intercept raises questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on August 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? “It’s unclear where control lies,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. “Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?”

Nor are U.S. analysts sure of the Syrian military’s rationale for launching the strike — if it had a rationale at all. Perhaps it was a lone general putting a long-standing battle plan in motion; perhaps it was a miscalculation by the Assad government. Whatever the reason, the attack has triggered worldwide outrage, and put the Obama administration on the brink of launching a strike of its own in Syria. “We don’t know exactly why it happened,” the intelligence official added. “We just know it was pretty fucking stupid.” [Continue reading…]

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White House sends conflicting messages on ‘regime change’ in Syria

Reuters reports: The White House ruled out any military effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power on Tuesday as President Barack Obama ponders options in response to last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria.

“The options that we are considering are not about regime change,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney. “They are about responding to a clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons.”

Obama is considering cruise missile strikes against Syrian targets in response to the August 21 chemical weapons attack that U.S. officials are increasingly confident was launched by the Syrian government.

Carney said the United States expects to release in coming days a public version of a formal report by the U.S. intelligence community on the use of chemical weapons. The report is expected to conclude the Syrian government was responsible for the attack.

Any attempt at “regime change” by the United States would draw the United States deeply into a conflict that Obama has been determined to avoid. The president has already ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria.

No attempt to bring about regime change — but that’s not quite what sources in the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul claim they have been told:

“The Americans are tying any military action to the chemical weapons issue. But the message is clear; they expect the strike to be strong enough to force Assad to go to Geneva and accept a transitional government with full authority,” a Syrian opposition figure said.

“The message to the opposition was to get a team ready for Geneva, and be prepared for the possibility of a transition. But we must also be ready for the possibility of the collapse of the regime. If the strike ends up to be crippling, and if they hit the symbols of the regime’s military power in Damascus it could collapse,” the source said.

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Obama chose the wrong red line on Syria

Anthony Cordesman writes: No one has accurate estimates, but the key challenge in Syria is scarcely to end the use of chemical weapons. The real challenge is some 120,000 dead, another 200,000-plus wounded, and as many as 20% of its 22.5 million people have been displaced inside the country or are living outside it as refugees. The nation has lost some three years of economic development, become a country of polarized factions, and seen many – if not most – of its children lose much of their schooling and learn to live in fear and anger in a country where more than a third of the population is 14 years of age or younger.

Chemical weapons alone are not a reason to use force. Even the most successful cruise missile strikes would not destroy Syria’s holdings. There is no credible chance the U.S. can locate or destroy Syria’s entire holding without a massive air campaign and some kind of presence on the ground. Even if the Assad regime has not done the obvious, and used the last few months to covertly disperse a large portion of its weapons, cruise missiles simply don’t have that kind of destructive power.

Even if the U.S. can somehow stop all future use of chemical weapons, the military impact will be marginal at best. Moreover, anyone who has actually seen wounds from conventional artillery — or badly treated body wounds from small arms — realizes that chemical weapons do not cause more horrible wounds. If anything, an agent like Sarin tends to either kill quickly or result in relative recovery. The case for intervening cannot be based on chemical weapons. It has to be based on two factors: Whether it serves American strategic interest and whether it meets the broader humanitarian needs of the Syrian people. [Continue reading…]

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Architect of plan for cruise missile strikes against Syria opposes carrying it out

The Cable reports: The United States appears to be closer than ever to deploying a series of surgical strikes on Syrian targets. But a key architect of that strategy is seriously and publicly questioning the wisdom of carrying it out.

In the last 48 hours, U.S. officials leaked plans to several media outlets to fire cruise missiles at Syrian military installations as a warning to the Syrian government not to use its chemical weapons stockpiles again. On Sunday, Sen. Bob Corker, who was briefed by administration officials twice over the weekend, said a U.S. “response is imminent” in Syria. “I think we will respond in a surgical way,” he said. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to set the groundwork for a U.S. military incursion.

Now, a former U.S. Navy planner responsible for outlining an influential and highly-detailed proposal for surgical strikes tells The Cable he has serious misgivings about the plan. He says too much faith is being put into the effectiveness of surgical strikes on Assad’s forces with little discussion of what wider goals such attacks are supposed to achieve.

“Tactical actions in the absence of strategic objectives is usually pointless and often counterproductive,” Chris Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said. “I never intended my analysis of a cruise missile strike option to be advocacy even though some people took it as that.”

“I made it clear that this is a low cost option, but the broader issue is that low cost options don’t do any good unless they are tied to strategic priorities and objectives,” he added. “Any ship officer can launch 30 or 40 Tomahawks. It’s not difficult. The difficulty is explaining to strategic planners how this advances U.S. interests.”

In July, Harmer authored a widely-circulated study showing how the U.S. could degrade key Syrian military installations on the cheap with virtually no risk to U.S. personnel. “It could be done quickly, easily, with no risk whatsoever to American personnel, and a relatively minor cost,” said Harmer. One of the study’s proposals was cruise missile strikes from what are known as TLAMs (Tomahawk land attack missiles) fired from naval vessels in the Mediterranean.

The study immediately struck a chord with hawkish lawmakers on the Hill who were frustrated with the options outlined by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey that required a major commitment by U.S. military forces with a pricetag in the billions. [Continue reading…]

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Iran warns West against military intervention in Syria

The Guardian reports: Iran has warned that foreign military intervention in Syria will result in a conflict that would engulf the region.

The threatening rhetoric from Tehran came in response to a statement by the secretary of state, John Kerry, on Monday that the US would respond to the “undeniable” use of chemical weapons in Syria.

In the strongest signal yet that the US intends to take military action against the Assad regime, Kerry said President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed a “moral obscenity” against his own people.

“Make no mistake,” Kerry said. “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapon against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny”.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Araqchi, indicated it was equally resolved to defend Assad.

“We want to strongly warn against any military attack in Syria. There will definitely be perilous consequences for the region,” Araqchi told a news conference. “These complications and consequences will not be restricted to Syria. It will engulf the whole region.”

Just checked to see if there’s any “threatening rhetoric from Washington” — Google News says not. That’s a relief.

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Syria and the International Criminal Court

Mark Kersten writes: Despite two years of an incessant civil war that has claimed at least 80,000 people, the United Nations Security Council has been mired in deadlock on how to respond to the violence in Syria. Yet the images and videos of civilians attacked with chemical weapons in the outskirts of Damascus has rocked the Syrian status quo. As Jon Western suggests, the chemical weapons attack may constitute “Syria’s Srebrenica,” galvanizing the international community into taking action in a war they can no longer afford to ignore.

The massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 became a crucial moment not only in the Bosnian war but for international justice. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia declared that the massacre at Srebrenica constituted genocide; generals and political officials have been tried and convicted for their role in the carnage.

In the case of Syria, however, there have been no calls from the Security Council for chemical weapons attacks to be investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that the use of chemical weapons in Syria constituted an “outrageous crime” that could not be met with impunity, there were no calls for the Council to refer Syria to the ICC. This begs the question: if the use of chemical weapons against thousands of civilians is a crime, why the silence on Syria and the ICC? [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s deep state might not be as deep as we think

Mark Perry writes: In March 1986, a new and more potent form of hashish began to show up on the streets of Cairo. Called “Bye Bye Rushdie” by the drug lords who peddled it, the hashish was named for recently deposed Interior Minister Ahmed Rushdie, a reformer who had launched a nationwide anti-drug crackdown the previous year. Rushdie had not only declared a war on drugs, he had also sacked ministry officials implicated in the trade, including high-level commanders of Egypt’s Central Security Forces (CSF) — the baton- and shotgun-wielding police who are tasked with keeping public order. And he failed.

On the morning of Feb. 26, thousands of CSF police had stormed the Haram police station and two nearby tourist hotels. The recruits were egged on by their commanders, who had spread a rumor that Rushdie planned to reduce their pay and extend their service. The rebellion spread. Within 24 hours the mutineers had captured most of Giza and loosed a campaign of lawlessness in parts of Cairo. When the CSF captured key installations at Assiut, on the Nile River, police Maj. Gen. Zaki Badr reportedly opened the Assiut channel locks — drowning nearly 3,000 CSF recruits and their leaders.

Stunned by these events, President Hosni Mubarak ordered the military to intervene to restore public order. Tank units took on the mutineers in street battles in Cairo, while Egyptian soldiers stormed three CSF camps — at Shubra, Tora, and Hike-Step. While no one knows for sure, it is estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 CSF personnel were slaughtered, after which Rushdie was unceremoniously fired by Mubarak and replaced with Badr, renowned for his friendship with the president as well as his vicious anti-Islamist views.

Badr ruthlessly culled the CSF of its mutineers, while taking great care to leave in place the CSF’s most corrupt officials — and the drug trade they controlled. So the appearance of “Bye Bye Rushdie,” was a kind of celebration — a way of telling the Cairo drug culture that things had returned to normal.

Understanding the 1986 mutiny is particularly important now, because of what Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s newly installed interim government describes as a lawless campaign in the Sinai launched by a mix of Bedouin tribesman, criminal families, “jihadist terrorists,” and “al Qaeda-linked fighters.” Western reporters have attempted to get a grip on just who these criminal gangs and jihadists are, but without much luck. “It’s anyone’s guess because no one can get there,” a reporter for a major news daily told me via email last week.

But while American journalists may be confused about what’s happening in the Sinai, a handful of senior officers in the U.S. military have been monitoring the trouble closely. One of them, who serves as an intelligence officer in the Pentagon, told me last week that Sinai troubles are fueled not only by disaffected “Bedouin tribes” but also by “Sinai CSF commanders” intent on guarding the drug and smuggling routes that they continue to control nearly 30 years after Rushdie’s attempted crackdown. “What’s happening in Sinai is serious, and it’s convenient to call it terrorism,” this senior officer says. “But the reality is that’s there’s a little bit more to it. What Sinai shows is that the so-called deep state might not be as deep as we think.” [Continue reading…]

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Egyptians channeling Glenn Beck

The New York Times reports: The sounds made lately by curfew violators here are mostly not shouts or gunshots, but the clacking of dice on wooden backgammon boards, the clicking of dominoes on cafe tables crowded with hookahs and grumbling fueled by years of upheaval.

When the conversation turns to politics, the predominant topic is a surprise to American ears: the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt.

However crackpot that view may sound, it is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month.

For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation of the curfew, the biggest danger was not from police officers and soldiers at checkpoints, but from angry men with a chip on their shoulders and a grudge against Al Jazeera, the Western press and America.

The “people’s committees,” which sprung up in Egyptian neighborhoods as a counterweight to the Muslim Brotherhood, in theory were disbanded last week. But that did not stop self-appointed guardians in the Zaki Street market of the Maadi neighborhood from repeatedly demanding identity documents, letters of permission and, especially, proof of not being affiliated with Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network, which is reviled because it is owned by Qatar, a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As patrons of the Red Apple Cafe ignored the new 9 p.m. curfew, the presence of an American elicited bountiful conspiracy theories, all of them involving America’s plan to destroy Egypt through its paid Brotherhood confederates. Even innocuous questions about the curfew, which on Saturday was shortened two hours, became ideologically fraught. “What are you doing, why are you asking about curfew?” yelled one man. “It is something internal.” A group of other men surrounding an interpreter, their faces only inches from his, introduced themselves by saying, “We are not thugs,” before proceeding to threaten and berate their interlocutors.

Egyptians have always shrugged off curfews. Cairo’s night life continues pretty much as normal in places like Maadi and especially in poor and working-class areas, where street life provides some relief to people who live in hot apartments.

On Zaki Street, the cafes were full of smokers of shisha, the flavored tobacco burned in water pipes, and of backgammon players. Outside, the driver of a horse-drawn cart full of canisters of cooking gas clanged his cans to announce his presence, and Farouq, a middle-aged man making deliveries to supermarkets with a motorcycle-drawn cart, stopped to talk.

“Americans are with the Muslim Brotherhood,” Farouq stated in a tone suggesting that it was common knowledge. “O.K., you did something good when you killed Osama bin Laden, but now you are with Al Qaeda. You support the terrorists.”

A strong anti-American undercurrent has always existed in Egypt, but such views are more normally associated with radicals and Islamists, and in reaction to American support for Israel.

But now anti-American sentiment is being stoked by an outpouring of dubious pronouncements from both state and private news media. Anti-Americanism has even been given the ultimate imprimatur of state tolerance: billboards. One next door to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, shows President Obama with a beard like those worn by the Brotherhood, alongside a more flattering picture of the clean-shaven military leader, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. [Continue reading…]

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Independent journalists vs. tools of the government

David Carr writes: A disgruntled loner with access to military secrets comes across documents that pull back the veil on government actions in a lost war and decides for a variety of reasons, some noble and some personal, to share them with the world.

That was Daniel Ellsberg in 1969, and for his efforts, which became the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he was investigated and indicted, but eventually he was hailed as a hero and enshrined in the journalistic canon.

Today that role has been taken up by Pfc. Bradley E. Manning (who now wants to be known as Chelsea) and Edward J. Snowden. Their chances of being widely declared heroes aren’t nearly as great: Private Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison last week, and Mr. Snowden, who revealed documents showing the extent of surveillance by the National Security Agency, is still hiding in Russia beyond the reach of the United States government.

Perhaps they got what’s coming to them. They knew, or should have known, the risks of revealing information entrusted to them, and decided to proceed. Like almost all whistle-blowers, they are difficult people with complicated motives.

So, too, are the journalists who aid them. It’s not surprising that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who brokered the publishing of Private Manning’s documents, and Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for The Guardian who has led the Snowden revelations, have also come under intense criticism.

What is odd is that many pointing the finger are journalists. When Mr. Greenwald was on “Meet the Press” after the first round of N.S.A. articles, the host, David Gregory, seemingly switched the show to “Meet the Prosecutor.” He asked, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

Jeffrey Toobin, who works for both CNN and The New Yorker, called Mr. Snowden “a grandiose narcissist who belongs in prison.” This week, he called David Miranda, Mr. Greenwald’s partner who was detained by British authorities for nine hours under antiterror laws, the equivalent of a “drug mule.”

Mr. Assange has also come under withering criticism, including in the pages of The New York Times, which accused him, among other things, of not smelling very nice as we cooperated with WikiLeaks in publishing reams of articles in July 2010 based on the revelations from Private Manning.

This week, Michael Grunwald, a senior national correspondent at Time, wrote on Twitter: “I can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.” (He later apologized, perhaps reasoning that salivating over the killing of anyone was in poor taste.)

What have Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald done to inspire such rancor from other journalists? Because of the leaks and the stories they generated, we have learned that in the name of tracking terrorists, the N.S.A. has been logging phone calls and e-mails for years, recorded the metadata of correspondence between Americans, and in some instances, dived right into the content of e-mails. The WikiLeaks documents revealed that the United States turned a blind eye on the use of torture by our Iraqi allies, and that an airstrike was ordered to cover up the execution of civilians. WikiLeaks also published a video showing a United States Army helicopter opening fire on a group of civilians, including two Reuters journalists.

In the instance of the stories based on the purloined confidential documents in the Manning and Snowden leaks, we learned what our country has been doing in our name, whether it is in war zones or in digital realms.

Mr. Toobin agrees that an important debate has been joined, but says no story, no matter how big, justifies journalists’ abetting illegal acts, saying, “Journalists are not above the law.”

“The Jane Mayers, Sy Hershes and Walter Pincuses have all done superb work for decades without the rampant lawlessness that was behind these stories,” he said, adding later, “I’ve never heard any of those journalists endorsing the wholesale theft of thousands of classified government records.”

The larger sense I get from the criticism directed at Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald is one of distaste — that they aren’t what we think of as real journalists. Instead, they represent an emerging Fifth Estate composed of leakers, activists and bloggers who threaten those of us in traditional media. They are, as one says, not like us.

“By no means was I treated as a hero when I first came forward. I was indicted and spent two years in court,” Mr. Ellsberg said in an interview. “But in those days, journalists were not turning on journalists. With Snowden in particular, you have a split between truly independent journalists and those who are tools — and I mean that in every sense of the term — of the government. Toobin and Grunwald are doing the work of the government to maintain relationships and access.” [Continue reading…]

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The detention of David Miranda was an unlawful use of the UK’s Terrorism Act

Charles Falconer, former UK lord chancellor and first secretary of state for justice, writes: The 2000 Terrorism Act, which I helped introduce, was not passed with people like David Miranda in mind. The issue then was how to secure lasting peace in Northern Ireland, and the act was designed to make it difficult for Irish dissident terrorists to come to the mainland. Schedule 7 of the act, which has come to public attention this week following Miranda’s detention at Heathrow, was retained from earlier legislation on the advice of Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Reviewing the evidence, he had found that the ability of officers to randomly stop and search people who were entering or leaving the country had disrupted terrorist operations.

So it was right in 2000 – and it is still right today – that police or immigration authorities should have powers to detain and question people in order to determine whether they are terrorists.

However, it is also right that schedule 7 powers can only be used “for the purpose of determining” whether the detained person is a terrorist. The use of the power to detain and question someone who the examining officer knows is not a terrorist is plainly not for this purpose, so it would neither be within the spirit nor the letter of the law.

There is no suggestion that Miranda is a terrorist, or that his detention and questioning at Heathrow was for any other reason than his involvement in his partner Glenn Greenwald’s reporting of the Edward Snowden story. The state has not even hinted there is a justification beyond that involvement. While there may be relevant facts of which I know nothing, it is reasonable to proceed on the basis that was the reason for the powers being used.

The Terrorism Act defines a terrorist as someone “involved in committing preparing or instigating acts of terrorism”. Miranda is plainly not committing or preparing acts of terrorism. [Continue reading…]

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How the use of chemical weapons ‘becomes very tempting’

Reuters reports: [D]iplomats and rebels interviewed by Reuters said Assad’s generals had been trying for some time to push the rebel units back to the southern ring road that separates Damascus from its more rural environs and neutralise the immediate threat to the heart of the capital.

The suburbs of Zamalka, Jobar and Ain Tarma sit in an expanse of farming country known as the Eastern Ghouta. Along with the town of Mouadmiya in the west, these areas had been pummelled for months by battlefield artillery, warplanes and surface-to-surface missiles before they were hit on the morning of Aug. 21.

In the 72 hours that followed, Assad’s mechanised forces from the Fourth Division and the Republican Guards, the praetorian units entrusted with defending his seat of power, mounted a major push to retake the four areas, but well dug-in rebels held out, sources said.

“The regime has been throwing everything he has at the Ghouta, but it remained a thorn in its side. When you have a large number of well-organised rebel fighters in an urban area with lots of cover, using chemical weapons becomes very tempting,” a Middle East based diplomat said.

When the revolt became militarised almost two year ago, the rebels of Ghouta, mostly from the Sunni majority that opposes Assad and his minority Alawite sect elite, were among the first areas in the country to take up arms.

The rebel groups there include the Saudi-backed Liwa al-Islam Brigade, Saladin Brigade, Jobar Martyrs Brigade, and Tahrir al-Sham, a unit headed by Firas al-Bitar, an officer who defected from Assad’s army and has a reputation as a good military planner.

“If the rebel units were not so well organised, Assad would have captured Ghouta long time ago,” said Moaz al-Shami, a prominent activist who witnessed fighting in Ghouta.

“The regime needed to kill 1,000 people in one go in Ghouta, or whatever the final tally of the chemical attack proves to be, because it was in need of a morale boost,” he added.

In the last few weeks, rebel brigades based in Jobar, which is only three kilometres from the central Abbassiyeen Square, managed to open a supply corridor to the besieged Damascus neighbourhoods of Barzeh and Qaboun in the northern sector of the capital, opposition sources said.

The link brought the military threat from Ghouta closer to the heart of Damascus and helped the two districts withstand intensifying loyalist attacks, the sources said.

“Rebel operations in the countryside have been merging with Damascus, and the regime could not take that. Assad would have loved to gas Barzeh and Qaboun as well, but they are too interconnected with loyalist areas,” said Khaled Omar, a member of the opposition Local Council of Ain Tarma.

“By hitting Ghouta, Assad thinks he is preserving Damascus and destroying a popular incubator of the revolution,” he added.

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More questions than answers as attack on Syria looms

Zvi Bar’el writes: “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” says Eli Wallach’s character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But he also says, “If you miss, you had better miss very well.” It seems that the fear of missing is the dilemma now facing the United States and Europe over Syria.

The countries are still talking. Even the signs of preparations for military action, bringing warships armed with missiles nearer to the Syrian border, urgent consultations at the White House and coordination of positions with European countries, do not take the safety catch off just yet. That’s because it’s not tactically missing the target that is the concern, since the location of the Syrian army’s chemical weapons sites are known. The concern is over diplomatically missing it.

The decision makers have before them a few versions, each pointing a finger in different directions following last week’s reported use of chemical weapons east of Damascus.

One version is that of the Free Syrian Army and the political opposition, whose spokesmen explaine at a news conference Saturday that the chemical missiles were fired by the Syrian army’s Brigade 115 from its Mount Kalamun missile base and that, during the attack, the head of the Syrian missile directorate, Taher Hamed Khalil, was present at the base.

Another version is that of Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq, relying on a source in the Free Syrian Army who claims that soldiers of the Fourth Elite Unit, commanded by Maher Assad – the Syrian president’s brother – raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center and captured quantities of the chemical weapons after killing a Syrian officer who refused to let them in.

A third version comes from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah, through an Iraqi source close to the separatist Muktada al-Sadr, who says that fighters from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in charge of some of the chemical weapons stores, fired the chemical weapons at the town of al-Ghouta, despite opposition by the Syrian army brass.

Yet another version, published on the Syrian opposition website al-Hakika, reported that the chemicals were smuggled from Turkey by activists of the Turkmen uprising and that these activists were the ones who fired the missiles to spark an international provocation.

The website, which published reports on the smuggling of the chemicals about a week before the attack – as well as after it – raises questions about the way the dead were found, plus the fact that the weather conditions on the day of the attack could not ensure that Syrian soldiers would not also be killed.

The Syrian regime has its own version, in which five Syrian soldiers were killed and others rushed to the hospital after they were injured by the chemicals.

In this abundance of versions, it seems that, at least in one matter, the fog has been lifted.

Chemical weapons, whose makeup is still not known for sure, were indeed used. Even Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday that Syrian citizens had been killed by chemical weapons – without, of course, saying who fired them. [Continue reading…]

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France says would be hard to bypass U.N. in action against Syria

Reuters reports: France’s foreign minister said on Monday no decision had been made yet on whether to take military action against Syria, but doing so outside the auspices of the U.N. Security Council would be problematic.

“It is a problem that will be difficult,” Laurent Fabius told Europe 1 radio.

“International law is defined by the United Nations, but at same time there are countries (on the council) that are blocking (military action)- China and Russia have blocked and would probably block again so it would be a problem…

“In certain circumstances we can bypass it, but international law does exist,” he said without elaborating.

All options on how to respond to the poison gas attack in the Damascus suburbs were still open. “The only one that is not on the table is to not do anything,” he added.

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Britain says Syria response possible without unanimous U.N. backing

Reuters reports: British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday it would be possible to respond to chemical weapons use in Syria without the unanimous backing of the United Nations Security Council.

U.N. inspectors will visit on Monday the site of an alleged chemical weapon attack which killed hundreds last week, but Britain and the United States have made clear they believe the access was granted too late and that the Syrian government was behind the attack.

“Is it possible to respond to chemical weapons without complete unity on the U.N. Security Council? I would argue yes it is, otherwise it might be impossible to respond to such outrages, such crimes, and I don’t think that’s an acceptable situation,” Hague said on BBC radio.

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Syria attack may force search for peace

Jim Muir writes: As happened in Iraq, intervention by the West risks fragmenting the country further, creating an uncontrollable situation and handing large parts of it to forces it regards as its enemies.

To that extent, there may be more common ground between Washington and Moscow than meets the eye.

The Russians, traumatised by Chechnya, are also mesmerised by the prospect of a radical Islamist takeover in Syria.

That is why some observers believe there is still a measure of understanding between the Russians and Americans, whose foreign ministers decided in May to work together to bring about the political settlement that everybody agrees is the only solution, but which is proving devilishly difficult to get under way.

So it is not out of the question that the huge pressures exerted on all parties by the chemical weapons attacks might just be enough to pop the cork and force movement towards negotiations, with the latest speculation focusing on Geneva in October.

Any such prospect, distant though it may seem, would clearly be set back by Western military action.

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